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By Jessica Tan

Even while on a holiday to Tasmania last September Singaporean property developer  Koh Wee Meng  could not help himself.

&ldquo It so happened that I came across this plot of land while driving along, seeing a &lsquo For Sale&rsquo signboard. After talking to the agent, I came to realize it&rsquo s cheap,&rdquo says the man who notably built up parts of Singapore&rsquo s Geylang district and has timed the city-state&rsquo s property cycles well enough to secure a $1.55 billion net worth. &ldquo For A$4 million [the price of two three-bedroom condo apartments on the fringe of his home city] you can own 2,000 square meters.&rdquo

Click here for more from this issue&rsquo s Singapore Rich List

As it turned out, that short stay led Koh&rsquo s Fragrance Group to its maiden foray abroad. Soon after picking up that acreage along a main drag of Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, Fragrance acquired two other mixed-use parcels in Melbourne and one in Perth.

Apartments, offices and retail are planned for the four sites, which are all in central  business  districts. Koh says he&rsquo s on the lookout for additional acquisitions in Australia.

Koh has done more than 100 projects in Singapore since 1992 but has tailed off. He also controls its second-largest budget hotel chain, Fragrance, operated under Global Premium Hotels (GPH), a Fragrance Group unit that was recently spun off.

He and his wife own 85% of Fragrance Group and 65% of GPH both trade on the Singapore stock exchange.

A well-timed entry into Australia is Koh&rsquo s best shot at making his next billion. Developers in land-scarce Singapore have faced rounds of government measures in recent years to cool price run-ups. &ldquo You can&rsquo t run fast like in the past,&rdquo he observes. &ldquo In the past perhaps you can sell 100 units within one or two months. Now, to sell 100 units, you take nine months.&rdquo Koh believes conditions &ldquo will continue to be tough.&rdquo

Several Singapore builders have rushed into Iskandar, the rising Malaysian metropolis just a 30-minute drive north of Singapore, while others have ventured into Vietnam and Myanmar. But Koh thinks that, along with peers like Ho Bee Land and Hiap Hoe, he is trying a more conservative stretch. &ldquo Australia is a safe country,&rdquo he says. &ldquo I prefer a country where the infrastructure is in place and where there&rsquo s political stability. I want to go to a place where the security is good. I can work safely I can walk safely.&rdquo

Mark Wizel, director of the Melbourne sales team at CBRE and the agent for one of Fragrance&rsquo s purchases, says there&rsquo s a historic undersupply of apartments there in the face of a &ldquo strong underlying international student population and the strong net migration coming to Melbourne out of Asia.&rdquo

Koh says all four buys in Australia totaled $156 million and were financed entirely by Fragrance Group, without bank loans. He says that one of the properties, along Collins Street in Melbourne, will be developed into a skyscraper, subject to approval.

&ldquo Over the next 18 months you should be able to see some sales and construction activity,&rdquo says Koh, adding that all developments &ldquo will move at one go.&rdquo Result: &ldquo Maybe it will take 3 to 4 years to complete.&rdquo GPH, his hotel business, may enter the Australian market, too.

Koh moved from a family jewelry business into property development during Singapore&rsquo s early 1990s boom.  In 1996, he began developing budget hotels in the seedy Geylang district, a venture that buffered him from the 1997 financial crisis as most property prices went south.

In 2009, Fragrance had another run at Singapore property. &ldquo During the global financial crisis, when some developers could not afford to buy land, we were the ones buying every month, &rdquo he says. It was during this period   that  his residential projects got bigger and bolder and GPH began to enter the midtier hotel business with its Parc Sovereign brand.

Business was brisk right until early 2013. That&rsquo s when he braked again, tendering for only one plot of land in Singapore, after going on a billion-dollar buying spree the year before. &ldquo You must never, never eat until the tail end,&rdquo says  Koh, who is most comfortable speaking a mix of English, Mandarin and Hokkien, a Chinese dialect. &ldquo You have to tell yourself: &lsquo Don&rsquo t be greedy.&rsquo &rsquo

While Fragrance Group has grown dramatically, Koh still keeps his office operations lean with no more than 25 on staff. Fragrance doesn&rsquo t conduct earnings briefings for analysts and management rarely gives media interviews. Koh doesn&rsquo t even have an email address or own a smartphone. (He carries an oldNokia  model.)

&ldquo To grow the company is my primary concern. I tell my people, if there&rsquo s anything urgent, just call my handphone, there&rsquo s no need to email,&rdquo he says. &ldquo My thinking is that I spend my time working on the company and making it grow.&rdquo